What to do about AI text generators? Next steps for educators

The National Academic Integrity Network (NAIN) welcome all interested colleagues to join our first webinar of 2023, which is focusing on the very topical issue of academic integrity and artificial intelligence.

Just how well can AI large language models such as ChatGPT generate academic prose in response to typical college writing assignments? Well enough that teachers and institutions need to come up with a response as soon as possible. We need academic integrity policies and a critical AI literacy curriculum to guide students on the risks and ethics of these tools. And we need to decide how to adapt our pedagogy. To what extent can detection tools, proctoring, oral assessment, and modified writing prompts prevent or reduce learning loss that might result from inappropriate use of AI text generators? What might the side effects of modified pedagogical practices be? Finally, how can educators advocate for tools and safeguards so that the societal rollout of this new technology helps rather than hurts student learning? We will examine a few practical next steps educators should consider.

Anna Mills teaches writing at College of Marin and previously taught at City College of San Francisco for 17 years. Her collection “AI Text Generators and Teaching Writing: Starting Points for Inquiry” is featured in the Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse; it includes a curated collection of articles, a set of sample AI essays, and a list of strategies for mitigating educational harms associated with large language models. She has also written an Open Educational Resource (OER) textbook, How Arguments Work: A Guide to Writing and Analyzing Texts in College, which has been widely praised and used at over 45 colleges. As the English Discipline Lead for the Academic Senate of the California Community Colleges OER Initiative, she leads professional development workshops on OER and collaborative annotation.  Anna earned a master’s degree from Bennington College in Writing and Literature with a focus on nonfiction writing, and her essays have appeared in journals such as The Writer's Chronicle, The Sun, and Salmagundi.